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eCommerce Software Review: Which platform has the best Themes?

Thanks to advancements in digital technology, creating a custom website, online store or personal blog has never been easier. In the past, creating a custom website involved investing heavily in the services of web developers, hosting companies and site security systems. Today, however, you can bypass all this by simply opting for hosted platforms. The latter are systems or software designed to take care of all the technical aspects of web creation for you. This means that with hosted platform literally, anyone can create their own bespoke website.

In the eCommerce sector, there is a great selection of hosted platforms that you can use to create your own custom eCommerce website. Before embarking on the creation of a custom website it is important to sample some of the platforms available and know which offers the best themes. That having been said below is a compilation of 7 popular eCommerce hosted platforms.

Magento

At the top of the list is one of the most popular eCommerce open-source solutions out there. This software solution boasts of exceptional flexibility and customization. As such, one of the main benefits of this software is that it can be scaled depending on a business’ growing needs. Also, worth noting is that you can host this software in your own server systems. When it comes to themes, Magento does not disappoint. In fact, it has some of the largest selections of themes. Some are offered on the platform while others are sourced from third party developers.

Thus, with Magento you are spoilt for choice when it comes to choosing a great template for your eCommerce store. Magento has close to 1900 themes from third party developers. These themes are divided into free and premium themes, with the cost of the premium themes ranging between $ 60 and $ 100.

Bigcommerce

Powering an estimated 95,000 online stores as of 2015, Bigcommerce is another popular hosted eCommerce software solution. One of the best things about this software solution is that it offers an impressive selection of practical tools that you will require for bettering the design of your site. Regarding theme selection, Bigcommerce does not have a lot to offer. The platform offers 7 free templates and a total of 76 premium templates. Bigcommerce recently revamped its line of premium templates, and it now boasts of professionally designed beautiful themes. These themes range from $170 to $195. Although Bigcommerce gives you a limited selection of themes, it offers you the freedom to tweak your website. In this regard, if you’re familiar with HTML and CSS codes, nothing is stopping you from tweaking your free template to suit your needs.

Squarespace

With over a million subscribers, Squarespace is yet another massively popular eCommerce software solution. One of the things that stand out about this platform is that it is design oriented. As such, Squarespace puts more emphasis on quality than quantity as far as templates are concerned. Therefore, do not expect to find hundreds of templates on this platform. In total, Squarespace has 40 designer themes.

However, do not let this number discourage you as they are all professionally designed and exude sophistication and stunningly clean. Furthermore, all the templates offered here will give your eCommerce website a high-end vibe. In essence, a lot of care was taken in the designing of each of the 40 themes available on this platform. These 40 templates focus on different niches, including portfolio, stores, blogs and businesses. Similar to Bigcommerce, Squarespace gives you HTML and CSS knowledge freedom to tweak their websites. In this regard, you can tweak your Squarespace website to fit your preferences and needs.

Wix

As of July 2016, Wix had 88 million registered users. This means that the platform is one of the most popular eCommerce web platforms. The secret to the success of this platform lies in its themes. Currently, the platform has 510 professionally built templates. These templates come packaged with example-content to give you an idea of how to customize your site. However, if you are creative Wix offers blank templates, which you can use to create content for your site. All the themes available on this platform are beautiful and creatively designed to meet the needs of different niches. To make customization easy, Wix features a drag and drop feature. This means that to customize your site all you need to do is drag and drop different content piece.

Volusion

Volusion is a popular eCommerce software. This platform has an estimated 400,000 stores. Volusion gives you a wide array of tools for building a capable website. These tools are offered as part of the platform’s monthly packages; therefore, the costly the package the more the tools offered. In regards to templates, Volusion has a total of 359 eCommerce themes. These templates are divided into free and premium templates. Free templates are 82 while the premium templates are 277. In addition to these templates, Volusion also offers 23 mobile friendly themes. Compared to other platforms reviewed above, Volusion’s themes are quite costly. Of the 359 templates, available 79 of them cost $895 per template. Thus, Volusion is one of the most expensive platforms, especially for beginners.

Bigcartel

Bigcartel is a platform that is popular among photographers, bakers, and authors and for good reasons. A fully-hosted platform with zero transaction fees, this platform is perfect for startups and freelancers. For as little as $0 you can have your own custom website with Bigcartel. However, if you want a custom URL, you will have to pay a monthly subscription. Bigcartel offers themes that do not require a lot of customization. As such, the platform’s themes epitomize simplicity. To make things more challenging, the platform provides only 11 templates, two of which are mobile friendly. People who possess some degree of experience in web development might find this platform’s templates mundane. It is for this reason that Bigcartel is the preferred choice of startup online stores.

3Dcart

3D cart is one of the oldest eCommerce platforms available. Thus, it should come as no surprise that it is one of the most popular platforms for hosting eCommerce website. As of 2014, the platform had over 17,500 registered users. All the templates available on this platform can be found in the theme store. This store is directly connected to the dashboard for easy navigation. The theme store holds over 100 themes optimized for conversion. One of the unique things about the 3Dcart themes is that they are unique. Thus, unlike other platforms, where certain templates are similar to others, the themes on this platform are all different from each other. Also, while not all the templates on this platform are spectacular, it does offer a decent selection of beautiful templates for various industries.

Shopify

The last eCommerce platform on this list is Shopify. This is a platform that does not compromise on quality. Each one of the themes found on this platform is designed to perfection by professional designers. Thus, you get a great selection of beautifully designed templates. If you are all about quality, you will be pleased to learn that some of Shopify’s premium themes are designed by world acclaimed designers such as the Pixel Union and Out of the Sandbox.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it’s difficult to tell, which platform has the best themes as each of the reviewed platforms offer something different. In this regard, while some platforms such as Magento are known for having a large selection of themes others such as 3D cart are known for their limited but high-quality selection of themes. Thus, it all comes down to what you want and how much you are willing to pay.

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In the eCommerce sector, there is a great selection of hosted platforms that you can use to create your own custom eCommerce website.